Monthly Archives: February 2010

Alright, we’ve been holding off on speaking our piece when it came to this whole catfight between the UPA and UOA until everyone who wanted to talk to us had spoken with us. Apparently, the New Hanover County Parks and Rec people have nothing more to say and neither does Gerics. Although, it appears that he’s still stewing on the whole situation. He’s just doing it elsewhere on the internet.

So, our fiancé brought up to us that this whole mess is pretty confusing, especially if you don’t know what is going on/the cast of characters. We realized that was definitely the case with our coverage. So, we’ve decided to take a step back, zoom out and clear the whole situation up a little bit.

Mike Gerics announces he’s received word that he’s been suspended by the UPA for a full year, blames George Mason.

We are now waiting to either be contacted back by Gerics or to hear more from NHCPRD.

Hopefully that will help clear up everything that’s been going on.

The only way we see more information getting added to this is if Gerics decides to talk to us about his side of the story, if NHCPRD returns our e-mail after our initial contact on Friday or if the UPA decides to open up the process by which one gets punished into Double Secret Probation.

We just spoke with Chuck Menke, head of communications in Boulder, and a George Mason representative. While appreciative of them both calling us back, we were a little disappointed to hear that the UPA and George Mason had no further comment on the whole situation.

“For right now (our public statement) is going to be our public comment on the situation,” Menke said. “Outside of the public statement that we just made, we don’t have any plans (to make any further statements). We thought we addressed the matter as well as we could.”

The George Mason spokesperson took a similar approach. Telling us the following.

“The only thing I really wanted to say is that George Mason talked to everyone and we will not be getting involved with this message board banter back and forth,” he said.

Furthermore, it appears that GMU is even less involved that most would have originally thought, including Gerics himself.

“No official complaint has been made to the UPA,” GMU said. “I spoke briefly with them but I was told they cannot do anything with my situation until I file a formal complaint. I have not done any of that yet and I’m still deciding on whether or not to. I’m trying to work the situation out with Mike on the side, separately, not through the message board.”

The spokesperson wanted to very clear on one point.

“The incident that happened with George Mason, is unrelated to Mike’s suspension,” he said.

It appears at the moment, that most of this is probably going to fizzle out while only minor issues, such as Gerics having some more animosity towards the UPA and the missing sanctioned games for upcoming 8s attendees, will linger.

We’re still hoping that Gerics e-mails us so that we can get his side of the story and we’ll be sure to let you know when we hear back from the Parks and Rec department. Until then, isn’t the Ultimate world a strange one?

Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to speak with just about anyone regarding the situation. We reached out to the UPA, Gerics, George Mason Ultimate and New Hanover Parks and Recreation Department, of those four, only George Mason Ultimate and NHPRD have contacted us back.

Unfortunately, we were at work when GMU’s representative called us. However, he seems willing to conduct some kind of interview and help us all get to the bottom of this.

The entire UPA offices seemed like they were cleared out by 3:00 this afternoon. We probably shouldn’t be too surprised by this, considering these are people who are professional Ultimate frisbee-type people. It would be a little ludicrous to think they would still be in their offices at 3:00 on a Friday.

We e-mailed Gerics and he has yet to respond. Perhaps we can get his whole side of the story from RSD but we’re hoping that we can have a little bit more in-depth/mature discourse if we’re talking to him one on one.

Anyway, the above picture and the one below were provided to us by Tara Duckworth from the NHPRD and she says that they are pictures of the damaged fields after the weekend of play. This is her full e-mail to us.

I am attaching pictures of the field conditions after the tournament. Unfortunately, these fields are heavily used by youth and adult soccer and adult league ultimate. All of these leagues are now displaced for the early Spring season due to the damage.

Here is the other picture she sent us.

Photo courtesy of Tara Duckworth.

We’ve got some follow up questions in to Tara and hopefully this will help us figure out NHPRD’s role in this whole mess. Although, we wouldn’t expect to be hearing from her or anyone else in the department until the weekend’s over. Hopefully, between now and then we can get in touch with Gerics or George Mason.

We’re going to keep from offering our opinion on the situation at the time being because we feel that there are large pieces of the puzzle missing. Here are some questions that we’d love to have answered, be it by Gerics, the UPA or anyone in the whole world.

Was Gerics warned to leave the fields in playable condition, if so, why did he let play continue?

What kind of vote/trial/process was taken in order to determine that a year-long suspension was a punishment that fit the crime?

Does the rocky relationship between Gerics and the UPA have anything to do with this quick and harsh punishment? Or is this a precedent that the UPA is setting? (In terms of, if you’re operating under the UPA’s name you better mind your P’s and Q’s/keep your pants on (Ego? Zing? Too Soon?))

What sort of retribution was the NHPRD looking for when they contacted the UPA?

Where does George Mason fit into all of this?

The list could go on for quite some time. For now, it’s clear that we may never get to the bottom of this, but that certainly won’t stop us from trying. Ultimate’s only investigative journalism team, at your service!

Three (nearly) full tournaments were played this weekend, in what proved to be the first weekend of the preseason that was not severely affected by inclement weather. That being said, teams attending Queen City Tuneup had to deal with snow and shortened round times while teams attending Mardi Gras had to deal with bayous encroaching into the middle of the field. Meanwhile, President’s Day frolicked out West like one would expect Californians to.

After the jump is this weekend’s recap. It may be of some interest to many of you but we are making some efforts to get in touch with the UPA, Mike Gerics and George Mason’s Ultimate program to try and sort out just what went down this last weekend. It would be somewhat of a tragedy in our opinion if the UPA decided to go through with what, at the moment, seems like a rash and harsh decision.

Perhaps we shouldn’t say anything in order to avoid alienating any of the parties involved but we wanted you, the readers, to know that we’re on the case to get the story from all involved. Good luck to all teams searching for sanctioned games.

College Trouble in Vegas has been a tournament that has brought us some of college Ultimate’s veryfinestmemories. However, between this season and last season, factors like an overgrown population and weather have seriously hurt the tournament’s reputation.

This season left many unsatisfied and even angry at the way things were handled by Cultimate. We spoke with Notre Dame captain Andrew Schroeder and discussed the problems TiV has encountered. Though he seemed relatively unhappy about the way things went down we both seemed to come to one conclusion.

Vegas is going to happen and it’s going to be well attended for as long as Cultimate wants to put it on. The fact of the matter is, it’s a weekend in Las Vegas with your team. That’s a tournament, completely disregarding any Ultimate (or lack thereof), that can only be rivaled by Mardi Gras. So, rant and rave against TiV as much as you want, in all likelihood, it won’t change. If it doesn’t, it still might be the most popular tournament every season. If it does, it still might be the popular tournament every season.

Onto the results!

We weren’t able to speak to many folks in the power pools but our worst fears from last season were realized. Few people have forgotten the sad ending to Oregon Ego’s season last year and if the early results are any indication then we might end up wondering what might have been last year if Ego had gone to Nationals last season.

We spoke to Florida fifth year captain Brodie Smith about the power pool play. He told us that Oregon looked strong. He had this to say about Oregon’s play.

“(Ego) just had a very in sync offense and (they) were playing a force middle defense i think against carelton that gave (CUT) some trouble,” Smith said.

Ego took Carleton to a double-game point situation but were defeated after the above video led to a questionable travel call by the defending champions. The call has been much debated on RSD but what can’t be debated is the fact that many of the top teams in the nation are evenly matched with each other.

Carleton’s two other games were decided by a total of three points. As a matter of fact, the only team in the power pools that didn’t have a win decided by two or less points was Florida, beating Cornell, Virginia and Wisconsin by at least seven goals each.

“Even without two of our starters playing, I felt pretty good,” Smith said. The Gators were missing Andrew Peterson on offense and Travis Catron on defense.

Cornell and Virginia certainly struggled the most out of the power pools both turning in 0-3 records. Elsewhere on the bottom half of the power pools stood Wisconsin and Stanford, both with 1-2 records. The Hodags were, in all likelihood, venturing outside for the first time since their CCC win in the fall. (Seriously, we imagine in Wisconsin, they have underground heated tunnels to go from place to place. How else would they survive?)

In the middle of the pack roamed perennial powerhouses Colorado and Carleton. Smith recapped their performances by saying that Mamabird’s youth shone through this weekend in an unimpressive performance and CUT looked as good as one should expect the defending national champions should look.

Of course, it’s hard to judge results of simply three games. It’s early in the season yet and who knows how all of these teams would have performed over an entire weekend. Trouble in Vegas wasn’t at all what we were hoping it would be and that is a bummer but the preseason rolls on, straight into a gigantic weekend of Ultimate.

W2W4

Teams to watch at Mardi Gras include Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas and Luther. We’ve got contacts at this tourney and we’ll be playing in the co-ed bracket with many kings and queens.

Alas, living on the east coast has left us far from the west coast and we’ve know not a single person or team (personally) attending the tournament. That being said, based on results keep an eye on UC and UCSD. The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds at this tournament have to be the favorites to win this tournament after both teams lost on double game point to Colorado at The Santa Barbara Invite.

The East Coast elite are assembling for the biggest early season tournament on the right side of the nation in the early season. The top seeds in the tournament are all likely to have a good tournament, but don’t forget about Georgia Tech, who had a strong showing at CCC and have the talent to go deep in every tournament they play in this year.

Believe it or not, all three tournaments that had any college open ramifications whatsoever were cancelled this weekend. We thought that, in the absence of Big D in Little d and The ACC Ultimate Championships we could bring you the story of Greenville, SC’s third annual Frozen Goose tournament. Alas, the wintry mix that swept the nation descended even on Upstate South Carolina.

South Carolina's Marshall Walker strongly challenges Jojah's Peter Dempsey for a disc on game point in the semis of Joint Summit Classic 2010. Photo by Jesse von Fange.

W2W4

As for next weekend, let us hope that better weather comes for one of the preseason’s most anitcipated tournaments: College Trouble in Vegas. We encourage you to check out Neeley’s discussion on the seeding and tiering format the boys at Cultimate are using this year for he is in the know about these things. All we can tell you is, some will people will grumble about it and some people will love it, but the vast majority will just want to play Ultimate in Las Vegas.

We’ve got a couple contacts headed out to hit The Strip and throw the disc but our coverage will hardly be comprehensive. Hopefully, we can give you a pretty solid account of what went down in the power pool and some snippets about what is happening on the rest of the fields.

There should be some lower level action in the AC at Discs over Georgia and some South Regional rivalries playing out at T-Town Throwdown. Unfortunately, neither of these two tournaments have any more information up at the moment. We may bring you some information about these tournaments but, they are far down the priority list when it comes to changing the face of the National picture for this season.